Literature, Medicine & Medical Humanities Welcome

After advocacy by a several MLA members and the endorsement of others, the organization formally adopted a Medical Humanities and Health Studies Forum in 2015, which presented its first session at the 2016 convention.

Many of us are working on representations of the body, sexuality, health, illness, disease, ethics, and the health professions. Admittedly, the terms “medicine” and “medical” humanities (a conventional name for this focus) are problematic (as many nursing colleagues will tell you because it connotes a focus on the authority and scope of practice of the physician). The uncritical “medicalizing” of human experience is also the frequent focus of our analysis.

This blog is designed for conversations, queries, and information shared among scholars whose work examines the discourses of the body. It also supports the work of the MLA’s Medical Humanities and Health Studies Forum.

KEEPING REFLECTION FRESH
Top Educators Share Their Innovations in Health Professional Education

To be published by Kent State Press in their Literature and Medicine series
Editors: Allan Peterkin, MD and Pamela Brett-MacLean, PhD

Scholars from both clinical and humanities disciplines have linked reflective capacity with key learning goals in clinical education, including fostering empathy, humanism and mindfulness, enhancing narrative and visual competence, challenging the “hidden curriculum” and supporting professional identity formation. Our teaching innovations have necessarily been influenced by our own diverse backgrounds, and for many of us, by unique collaborative relationships we have entered and by what we have learned when we have shared and reflected back on our work. In this volume of short descriptive, readable, personal essays, we look forward to highlighting a broad array of representative methods, processes and themes associated with introducing our learners to the benefits of reflexivity and reflection as they become health professionals.

We welcome contributions describing various pedagogical approaches, along with your reflections, impressions, obstacles and surprises. We look forward to learning about the difference it may have made – for your learners, and potentially also for your educational institution, and clinical teaching sites. This collection offers an accessible view of our various praxis approaches, and also an opportunity to clarify and further our understanding by thinking with and through our own stories as reflective practice educators.

Here are some general (but non-prescriptive) guidelines for submission:

We are seeking submissions from 500-1500 words on how you encourage your students and colleagues to become reflective practitioners.

How/Where to Submit:
Please send us your submission as a Word/PDF in the following format:
• Provide an engaging narrative about how this teaching approach came to you
• Offer a clear description of your teaching innovation (with sufficient detail which would allow others to adapt/use it)
• Describe impacts thus far/ future imaginings
• Describe the clinical/ humanities disciplines informing your approach to teaching reflective practice
• Provide a three line bio

Where indicated, include:
• Appropriate authorization for reprinting of text/images and sample student excerpts should be obtained.
• A “top three” list of references/publications/web links/resources if available